1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to devices and processes that evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of an organization, such as a business.
2. Related Art
It is a well known for an organization, such as a business, to hire an outside consultant to perform an assessment of the current state of the organization's processes, technologies, and organization structure and to identify specific improvement opportunities. Such an assessment typically involves having the consultant visit the organization to interview key employees, to review existing organizational charts and documentation of processes, and conduct workshops. The assessment also can involve having the consultant observe the inner workings of the organization, such as the accounting process, the billing process, the shipping process and the power structure of the organization.
A critical element of the assessment is to interview various individuals of the organization in order to learn from them what they believe are the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. The interview can also be used to learn of various ideas from the individuals on how to improve the organization. Such interviews can be problematic. For example, the interviews need to be given at a convenient time for both the interviewer and the interviewee. That can be difficult based on the time of year, the business cycle of the organization and time intensive projects being launched at the time, for example.
A related problem is that the interviews usually result in the interviewee taking time off from his or her job in order to attend the interview. Obviously, this leads to lost productivity for the organization.
Besides the time issues, another problem of the process is the types of questions asked. The success of the interviews is highly dependent on the interviewer asking the right type of questions to the interviewee. An inexperienced interviewer may miss a key question to ask that may skew the results or lead to a follow up interview to ask the question. This obviously can be inefficient and costly. In addition, the interviewer may ask questions in a haphazard manner so that it is hard to assess the answers as a whole.